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Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

“Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality [...] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.”

Quote by Stephen Jay Gould

Book:Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

Work

Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history

This book offers a series of essays and observations that delve into the intricacies of the natural world, examining the lives of animals, the impact of human activity, and the beauty of the environment. The author uses a unique perspective to explore the connections between nature and human life, providing readers with a deeper understanding of the natural world. more

Author

Stephen Jay Gould

Stephen Jay Gould was a renowned paleontologist, evolutionary theorist, science writer, and academic. He is known for his work in ornithology, paleontology, evolutionary theory, and speciation. Gould's writings and papers have had a profound impact on the scientific community, and he was a long-time contributor to the journal 'Nature'. more

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“We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new information leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.”

“Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.”

People Thinking Knows Way Wells Enough Magic Stage Particular Ordinary Scientist Tricks Objectives Mortals Performers Arrogant Psychics Fooled Scrutiny Phony

Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)

“I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and highly injurious.”

Whole Values Groups Setting Settings Labels Enterprise Irrelevant

Book:The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (Revised & Expanded)

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“Darwinian natural selection only yields adaptation to changing local environments, and better function in an immediate habitat might just as well be achieved by greater simplicity in form and behavior as by ever-increasing complexity.”

Wells Might Form Natural Environment Greater Behavior Function Simplicity Locals Complexity Yield Selection Adaptation Natural Selection Habitat Natural Habitats

Book:Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“The vigorous branching of life's tree, and not the accumulating valor of mythical marches to progress, lies behind the persistence and expansion of organic diversity in our tough and constantly stressful world. And if we do not grasp the fundamental nature of branching as the key to life's passage across the geological stage, we will never understand evolution aright.”

Source: I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History

“The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a sterile contest between environmentalists and hereditarians and turns it into an argument between those who are impressed with what our biology stops us doing and those who are impressed with what it allows us to do.”

Turns Argument Accounts Merit Biology Impressed Contests Environmentalist

Author:Stephen Jay Gould

“If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated and must not be condemned by genetic speculation.”

People Ifs Needs Humans Life Is Liberty Position Behavior Adults Philosophical Sticks Worthy Arguing Speculation Private Life Unnatural Condemnation Vindicated

Book:Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

Source: Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History

“Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.”

Ifs Knows Wells Past Form Lying Roles Capacity Machines Function Certainty Features Imperfect Organisms Unpredictable Adapted Quirky Optimal

Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

Source: Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History

“We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.”

Ifs Needs Humans May Literature Process Human Beings Simple Known Labor Genre Historian Peculiar Legends Heroic Rescue Textbooks

Book:The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History

Source: The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History